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Cross-posted with permission from Genuine Interactive
Recently, Genuine hosted the 2014 Global Drupal 8 Sprint Weekend and Acquia co-sponsored the event with about 30 attendees. Drupalists from Boston and the New England area came together to work on issues to push Drupal 8 for beta release. And for those who couldn’t make it to Genuine’s office, participated via Google Hangout.
The event was a great success with contributors working all day to fix... More

Call centers, chat sessions, direct emails. These are effective methods of supporting developer communities. The advantages of replacing them with the social support of online communities, though, is a matter of simple math. In addition to lowering the costs of supporting developers, studies have shown that leveraging online communities also has the benefit of increasing customer satisfaction. After all, who better to troubleshoot your issue? A developer who dealt with the same issue a week ago, or someone either struggling to find the answer in a training manual or trying to dredge up second... More

Drupal is one of the most flexible content management systems in existence. In this blog series, I'll go over five mistakes to avoid on your Drupal website which include: architecture, security, performance, infrastructure, and website lifecycle management.
Hat tip to my colleague Ryan MacInnis for prompting me to write this up!
From an architecture standpoint, these are the most vital decisions you'll make to ensure the success and performance of your Drupal website.
How you structure content
How you configure the display
How you organize functionality
Architecture: Content
Content is the... More

Way back in 1999 -- a thousand years ago in internet years -- writer and designer named Darcy DiNucci coined the phrase Web 2.0. This marked the beginning of the web as a social experience, eventually altering commerce so that today customers can be brand advocates who play a crucial role in building your business.
You already know that your customers are talking about your brand on social media platforms, posting images from your product pages to Pinterest, and checking reviews. The brick-and-mortar and virtual commerce experiences have become so intertwined that customers sometimes even... More

What's new with Drupal 8?
It's been a remarkable couple of weeks for Drupal 8, with several landmark changes, a global sprint, and a surge in core issue queue activity.
Global sprint weekend
The second Global Sprint Weekend was held January 25-26. Over 400 sprinters participated at 39 locations on six continents, with others participating remotely in IRC. Some quick core issue queue statistics from the sprint timeframe:
80 new Drupal 8 core issues created
553 Drupal 8 patches submitted
2468 comments posted on 646 Drupal 8 issues
113 Drupal 8... More

Here are some of the past week's highlights from DigitalDisruption.com, Acquia's portal for examining the impact of digital disruption.
Steve Wozniak shares insights on future, and past
What’s on the mind of, Steve Wozniak, the man who holds the patent for “microcomputer for use with video display?” Not surprisingly for the man who built the first MacIntosh computer, he’s thinking about the usability of technology, specifically wearable technology.... More

Cross-posted with permission from Digital Disruption
SAN FRANCISCO - The dust has settled and the inflatable Android blow-up dolls have been put away...Apps World North America is officially over.
I finished Day 2 with probably the best talk I heard this week, given by Marc Heedt of Twitter. The brand strategist and social TV specialist for the online social networking platform, Heedt talked about how TV and Twitter are the “force multiplier” in the second screen experience.
“We’re seeing... More

SAN FRANCISCO- While you may be familiar with Sephora as the cosmetic store at the local mall, the beauty chain is very comfortable in the virtual marketplace as well, concentrating on social and mobile platforms.
I had the chance to catch up with Danny Sullivan, vice president of mobile for Sephora, while attending Day 2 of Apps World North America. I asked Sullivan to talk about how Sephora is approaching mobile and utilizing responsive design. Sullivan took part in an Apps World panel that examined how mobile devices and tablets are changing the consumer experience and how new technologies... More

Drupal has a fantastically useful feature called Multi-site - it allows you to serve many sites from a single Drupal codebase. This can greatly reduce the overhead of managing code across multiple sites, and enables great agility in launching new sites quickly.
In this article, I'll go into the detail of multi-site and try to demonstrate how it could be useful for your organisation, and in a follow up post, I'll talk about... More

Cross-posted with permission from Digital Disruption
After eight hours of panels, startup and app presentations, and a keynote by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, day 1 of Apps World North America is complete. Here are some of the highlights:
Steve Wozniak's Keynote
Right off the bat, Wozniak urged the crowd of about 8,000 to really think about what it means to be innovative. He pointed out that IBM had claimed to have been an innovative brand for 20 years, but more... More

Cross-posted with permission from Digital Disruption
SAN FRANCISCO -- What’s on the mind of, Steve Wozniak, the man who holds the patent for “microcomputer for use with video display?” Not surprisingly for the man who built the first MacIntosh computer, he’s thinking about the usability of technology, specifically wearable technology.
“Wearable tech is something that is huge today,” the personal computing pioneer who has come to be known simply as “Woz,” told me, adding, “But I think its... More

Cross-posted with permission from OHO Interactive
Launching a national advertising campaign that invests your valuable budget dollars in television, radio, print, outdoor, and online media is a great way to drive traffic and give a push toward reaching your business goals. But if you’re driving to a poor web experience, you’re wasting your money.... More

I spoke with Slovenian Drupalist-extraordinary Janez Urevc at Drupal Camp Vienna 2013. Alongside being a Drupal developer at examiner.com, he is also a major force in everything media+Drupal. Janez is slashrsm on Drupal.org, Twitter and "all the other online services you can imagine." He's on the team planning Drupal Camp Alpe-Adria 2014, which will be in the beautiful Slovenian resort town of Portoroz in May. Knowing the wonderful Drupal community in Slovenia... More

Late last week, Acquia was rated Positive by Gartner in their new MarketScope for User Experience Platforms.
What are User Experience Platforms (UXP) you ask? Here's what Gartner says:
Traditional approaches to architecting, developing and managing websites, portal sites and mobile apps use a variety of disconnected and duplicative tools... A UXP is an integrated set of tools for delivering modern websites and portals. It focuses on the front end, the presentation and user interaction layer.
When Gartner kicked off their... More